Unique seminal quality in the South African cheetah and a comparative evaluation in the domestic cat

This study established a quantitative baseline for cheetah reproductive physiology by electroejaculating wild-caught males and comparing their semen to that of domestic cats. The cheetahs produced ejaculates with very low sperm concentrations and a strikingly high fraction of morphologically abnormal spermatozoa, including coiled and bent flagella and malformed heads. Hormone measurements and testicular evaluation accompanied the semen analysis to characterize the endocrine background. These findings documented teratospermia as a species-wide trait rather than an artifact of captivity and tied poor gamete quality to the cheetah's depleted genetic variation. The work became the methodological and conceptual foundation for cheetah assisted reproduction, informing later artificial insemination, sperm cryopreservation, and genome-banking programs across nondomestic felids.